Changing of the Tide
by Temari 88
Summary: - "She had always looked at Gaara as something that had pushed his way into her life ... thinking it had actually been Gaara's fault that their mother had died, well it had been so much easier. Now she didn't know how to deal with him." -


_Hello everyone :D_

_I really have to start to get back into the swing of writing after a number of months of odious block. I have fics to go back to and I feel extremely guilty for leaving them there... T.T  
Hopefully with this little thing I'll quickly get used to writing in this language again._

_Now, this came from a round-robin meme in which I participated - taking the part I added, I expanded it on my own to make something mine only but maintaining the general request of the prompt given ^^_

_Disclaimer: I own nothing but what I wrote._

_Ja ne,  
Temari 88 _

* * *

**Changing of the Tide**

She had always looked at Gaara as something that had _pushed _his way into her - their - life, stripping her of the only person she had ever really cared about in the process. Sure, it was their father's fault that Karura had died giving birth to the monster the Kazekage had craved for (damn him to the deepest pits of Hell for that), still Temari had blamed the red-haired far more than she ever blamed the other man—at the time she and Kankurou had been too young to understand... and once old enough to understand, they had only seen the bloodthirsty side of their brother and letting their fear-huddled minds rest in peace in thinking it had _actually _been Gaara's fault that their mother had died, well it had been so much easier.

Before the mess during the last part of the chunnin exams, even when Gaara was still (eyes closed, arms crossed, tense shoulders and rustling sand) and silent, Temari could feel the raging anger, the boiling hatered, the thin string of self-control that could snap any second, the faint underlining smell of blood clinging to his frame... it scared her. She would **never **admit it, of course, but Gaara scared her _so much—_and she despised herself for letting that cold feeling set in her stomach and almost get the better of her every time those pale green eyes fixed upon her. Even as she stepped up to stop him from maiming an anonymous someone that did not need to die, she would quiver.

Always.

Temari knew very well what Gaara was capable of. The amount of blood he had spilled in his short life was more than most shinobi saw in _their _whole life, especially in time of relative peace; he had no qualms in slaughtering people and the strong smell of copper, the crunch of bones breaking within the sand, the pained screams, the gurgling sounds coming out of rapidly choking victims, the pleas—they were all taken in with indifferent, cold eyes most of the times, or with a dark grin of satisfaction at best. Nothing of the gore he left behind weighted on Gaara's mind because the people he killed were of no importance to him. And even when it was their job, sometimes, to stain their hands crimson - ninjas were ninjas - the sheer amount of bodies in Gaara's wake were enough to make Temari and Kankurou want to retch.

... Now though... she didn't know how to deal with him, now.

She had seen him in a new light, when Kankurou and her had arrived to where Gaara and the blond Konoha kid had fought... she had been shocked at seeing her monster-brother laying on the ground, looking more broken than ever in his life. She couldn't comprehend it—how could Gaara seem so... _defenseless_? Was the genin laying there in his back really the same as the one that had released Shukaku in the middle of the forest? She could hardly believe it, wanting to pinch a cheek to be sure it wasn't a dream, yet, as Temari raised her head slightly to face beyond the fire blocking her sight, that silent figure standing on the branch of the tree just out of the clearing... it radiated a different kind of quiet and the longer she stared at the shadowed back, standing stock still and facing in the direction of Suna, the more she found she didn't feel any fear rising inside her.

She only felt a kind of contempt as she remembered Gaara's apology echo in her mind... it had been shocking, hearing those words come out of his mouth. She wondered for a brief moment what had changed in the short time she had lost sight of Gaara, while he battled the Konoha idiotic genin—did he say something to the red-haired? What could he have said to produce the confused and doubting expression she had seen on her brother's face?

... Her eyes widened an inch as realization struck: if that "I'm sorry" Gaara had mumbled through a sore throat had been as _sincere_ as it had sounded... she tried to resist a sudden impulse to... _smile_, but found she was far too tired to be stubborn (just this once) and let a corner of her lips rise imperceptibly behind the hand that was supporting her chin.

Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for them and they could go back home as a little more of a family than they had been when they left...


End file.
